Your Highness Features McBride, Franco and Plenty of Portman

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At NYCC, we check out the first footage from the upcoming comedy.

By Eric Goldman

Saturday got off to a very fun start in the IGN Theater today at New York Comic Con with a panel for the upcoming comedy Your Highness. Stars Danny McBride, James Franco and Justin Theroux were in attendance, along with director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express). It was noted that this film stemmed from the mutual love Green and McBride (who are old college friends) had for fantasy films, with McBride naming Conan the Barbarian and Krull as the type of movies he was a fan of. McBride said the intent was, to make, "Not a spoof, but really just make ones of those films," albeit with much more comical characters. Of course, Green also noted, "We pride ourselves on historical inaccuracy."

The footage they showed went over extremely well with the crowd, highlighting what looks to be a very funny, very R rated movie. We see James Franco's more classically heroic Fabious and his buffoonish brother Thadeous (McBride). But we really get the tone when we see Justin Theroux's evil wizard Leezar declare to Zooey Deschanel's Belladonna, "I'm here to steal a beautiful virgin who looks just like you." Asked how he plans to do that, Theroux retorts, "Magic, mother**ker!" Which is when he lets loose with some big time magic blasts.

We then see Fabious and Thadeous set out on a quest to save Belladonna, joined by Natalie Portman's Isabel – and Portman fans will be very interested, to say the least, in the scene in which we see the two brothers watch her strip down by a lake to a bra and what looks do a medieval version of a thong. When Portman spots the two, McBride tells Franco, "Stay perfectly still!" and he and Franco, in full view of Portman, simply hold in place.

The humor is clearly very blue. When Thadeous asks Fabious if he'd still want Belladonna if Leezar succeeds in having his way with her, Fabious says he doesn't want to think about it, to which Thadeous replies, "What if he butt f**ked her? Would you still want her?"

We also saw that there were indeed a lot of action and fantasy elements, including a scene where the brothers are attacked by a multi-headed serpent. Of course this is a fantasy film where Fabious, after being bit on his upper leg, screams to Thadeous, "Suck out the venom!" When Thadeous resists, insisting Fabious do it himself, Fabious yells, "I can't suck my own venom!" Which is when Thadeous begins shoving Fabious' head down towards his own crotch.

We also see McBride in bed, with a number of bottles next to him, one of which he spills onto his hands and puts below his sheets. Which is when Portman walks in, saying she couldn't stop thinking about him. Says McBride, "What a coincidence. I was just about to finish thinking of you."

The final scene shows McBride and Franco smoking from a hookah, provided by a strange creature, reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland's caterpillar. After Franco smokes, his eyes bug out and he yells, "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?!" Says McBride, "You, making a fool of yourself? Handle your s**t!"

During the panel, Theroux described the script to Your Highness as, "unbelievable. One of the funniest ideas I had read in a long time." As for his approach to playing the villain, he deadpanned, "I watched a lot of Gary Oldman and I realized if I could just kick Gary Oldman's ass and be better than he did, I'd be all right."

Danny McBride and Justin Theroux at NYCC.

Franco had worked with both Green and McBride before on Pineapple Express and said he was very happy to do so again on this film, "especially when the references were Conan and Barbarian Queen."

McBride and Green said that having a film with the kind of setting and subject matter as Your Highness led to a lot of interesting conversations, with McBride noting they would ponder, "What does a Minotaur's dick look like. Should it be circumcised?" David also said they spent a lot of time with the props department figuring out what "medieval bongs" would look like.